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is 39.51 years. "Lifetime," says the Registrar-General,
"lies between the mean age at death and the number living
out of which one dies annually. Two-thirds of the difference
plus the mean age at death=lifetime nearly." Now, as we had
one death to 47.23 living while our mean age was in years
24.14 and the difference of the two was 23.09 ; two-thirds of
this, or 15.37 years with 24.14 the average age at death make
the mean lifetime 39.51. Of the adults, or all those who
outnumbered 20 years, the age at death was 54.58. Tables
5 and 6 represent the variations of the Social and SubDistrict
means.
What proportion the mortality bore to each successive age
I now proceed to state. You will see, and indeed with deep
regret, that Table 2 depicts a grevious loss of infant life—
more in fact than the half of all who died. You will doubtless
feel that with the natural advantages we possess, a loss
so untoward ought not to be, and that at least to some death
should come " in its natural course when the years are told
out and the task of life is fulfilled." Such however, or 1146
deaths out of 2225, was our infantile loss, in 1861;—a loss
that imperatively calls for all our sanitary and preventive
care. In the first stage, that is, under 3 months' old, 266
infants were swept away; in the second, or from 3 to 6
months, 114 more; and in the third, or from 6 to 12 months,
223 besides. Thus 27 out of 100 deaths happened under the
age of 1. Again, there fell 286 between one year and two;
135 between two and three; 77 between three and four ;
and 45 between four and five. From that time to the age
of ten, when the perils of life are less, the mortality .was
67, and from ten years to twenty, it numbered 71. Altogether
the percentage of the first vicenniad amounted to 57.7 of each
100 deaths. In the second vicenniad, or from 20 to 40
years, a period wherein " life is most secure," 221 other
persons died. During the next vicenniad, or from 40